Mactracker: A Mac Blogger’s Swiss Army Knife

When I write about Apple, I do my best to lay out some historical data and discuss where my experience came from as it helps put things in perspective for whatever I’m about to rant or rave about. There have been way too many times where I complain about the price of a machine, only to realize it’s actually cheaper than the last generation model.

I wish meaningless facts like the viewing angle of Apple’s 23″ Apple Cinema Display and the price of the Dual 500Mhz PowerMac G4 were just stuck in my head, but they’re not. I cheat quite a bit, but not by running all over the web trying to find wiki pages and old press releases. Instead, I use Mactracker.

This donation-ware application that’s available for Mac and iPhone is a tool I fire up before starting a blog post about Apple or Macintosh products. In addition to price and technical specs, Mactracker also contains history of models, their code names, and the startup chime associated with that machine. As a blogger and fanboy, this application can keep me entertained for hours, and I’m never caught wondering what stock hard drive came on the 600Mhz iBook G3 (it was 20GB).

I hope you’ll download this great application and send a nice little donation off to the developer. I discovered Mactracker in 2004, but the developer has been updating it with info since 2001, which is quite the commitment from one guy.